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Warning: This post is long and slightly off topic. If you are interested in long cranks or Surly Mr. Whirly cranks read on, if not go to another thread.
Starting off on topic, a picture of the end result:
![]()
My 3yr old Wily with Mr. Whirly Cranks.
If you are anything like me you got pretty excited when you first heard the news that Surly was going to make a forged 185mm crank with external bottom bracket and an available 58/94 spider. That would seem to be the perfect thing for a tall clyde with a 29"er. I bought one and have taken it out on a couple of rides. I found very little information on these before buying them, so I hope my post can be helpful to anyone thinking about these cranks.
To start with I ordered 4 parts. The 185mm arms, the 94mm spider, the 68/73 spindle and the Surly BB cups. This is what those four parts looked like after opening the packages.
![]()
That's a lot of parts for a crankset and it still doesn't have any chainrings. Contrary to the descriptions I read, the arms came not only with the chainring bolts, but the nuts as well. You could mount all 3 rings with the provided steel nuts, bolts and (aluminum?) spacers. BB spacers came both with the arms and the BB cups, so I got double what I needed for those. I did weigh this stuff, but the results are on my work computer. The total weight of all the stuff in the picture less 3 of the BB spacers was a little under 900g assuming my memory is working today. They are heavier than my 185mm Carminas w/UN72, but lighter than my 195mm HSCycles w/UN72. I like these better for use on my Wily than the Carminas and they are way better than the HSCycle cranks.
All of the pieces seem the be exceptionally high quality. I always thought of Surly as a sort of low cost / decent quality practical brand. The cranks were much more expensive than I thought they would be, but they were also much better quality. The parts fit together very precisely and have a clean attractive finish.
Despite all the small parts, assembly was straight forward. The only minor issues I ran into dealt with the inner chainring. The directions state to put the spider and inner chainring on first and torque to some spec that seemed nowhere near tight enough. Then you are to add the outer and middle rings. This doesn't work if you use the supplied chainring nuts. They are a little longer than normal nuts and won't actually fit between a tightened down inner ring and the middle ring to get them in the holes.
The other minor issue I ran into was with the 58mm BCD and the external BB cups. Out of eight 58mm BCD chainrings in my garage, only one would actually work with the Mr. Whirly cranks without modification. The inner chainring is actually positioned such that it rotates around the BB cup. The BB cup must be able to fit through the middle part of the ring. In the picture below, the silver 20T Sugino steel ring just barely fits around the BB cup. I'm guessing all you'd have to do is clear it since the cranks are so stiff, but I haven't actually tried it yet. You can see some of the gold from the 24T aluminum Vuelta that extends inside the Sugino ring. This little extra aluminum causes the issue. I don't know what dremmelling off that part of the ring would do to it structurally, but at some point that's what I will do.
![]()
I ended up installing these with a 29T in the middle and a bash ring in the outer with nothing in the inner position. This is what I had been running with my HSCycle 195mm
cranks.
![]()
On the trail, it didn't take long to notice a huge improvement in stiffness of these cranks over any other cranks I've ridden. To be fair, the only non-square taper cranks I've ridden were a set of Octalink XT's from about '99-'03. This is the first external BB crank I've ridden. Any leverage I lose in going from 195mm down to 185mm is more than made up for in the stiffness. Chainline and Q are what I would call neutral. I wouldn't mind if both moved outward a bit, but I like a wider Q than most people would and the middle ring was pretty well centered on the rear cassette. This is good since you really can't adjust either with this design.
I could go on and on about how much I like these cranks and really do think they are just about perfect. Perfection, to me, would have been to use 74mm as the base BCD for the arms and then do what you want with the spiders. If you wanted a 58/94 spider, then you just attach the spider to the 74mm holes and have 58 & 94mm holes on the spider. When I saw the price of the 94mm Spider, I thought long and hard about ordering the 27T X 58mm chainring Action-Tec lists on their website and not buying a spider. I don't know if Surly would consider no-spider usage of their crank as officially supported. But, a single 58mm BCD ring could easily be bolted on and the cranks seem very sturdy. Using 74mm holes could give anyone wanting to run a single ring up front many low-priced options for rings without buying a spider. It's one thing to say I would want cranks like that and another for someone to go through a complete design effort to see if it is even feasible to create something that is economical and structurally sound.
I suppose time and miles may dull my enthusiasm for these, but for now I love them. I think the last time I got this excited about a bike component was 10-11 years ago when I got my Chris King hubs.
Starting off on topic, a picture of the end result:
My 3yr old Wily with Mr. Whirly Cranks.
If you are anything like me you got pretty excited when you first heard the news that Surly was going to make a forged 185mm crank with external bottom bracket and an available 58/94 spider. That would seem to be the perfect thing for a tall clyde with a 29"er. I bought one and have taken it out on a couple of rides. I found very little information on these before buying them, so I hope my post can be helpful to anyone thinking about these cranks.
To start with I ordered 4 parts. The 185mm arms, the 94mm spider, the 68/73 spindle and the Surly BB cups. This is what those four parts looked like after opening the packages.
That's a lot of parts for a crankset and it still doesn't have any chainrings. Contrary to the descriptions I read, the arms came not only with the chainring bolts, but the nuts as well. You could mount all 3 rings with the provided steel nuts, bolts and (aluminum?) spacers. BB spacers came both with the arms and the BB cups, so I got double what I needed for those. I did weigh this stuff, but the results are on my work computer. The total weight of all the stuff in the picture less 3 of the BB spacers was a little under 900g assuming my memory is working today. They are heavier than my 185mm Carminas w/UN72, but lighter than my 195mm HSCycles w/UN72. I like these better for use on my Wily than the Carminas and they are way better than the HSCycle cranks.
All of the pieces seem the be exceptionally high quality. I always thought of Surly as a sort of low cost / decent quality practical brand. The cranks were much more expensive than I thought they would be, but they were also much better quality. The parts fit together very precisely and have a clean attractive finish.
Despite all the small parts, assembly was straight forward. The only minor issues I ran into dealt with the inner chainring. The directions state to put the spider and inner chainring on first and torque to some spec that seemed nowhere near tight enough. Then you are to add the outer and middle rings. This doesn't work if you use the supplied chainring nuts. They are a little longer than normal nuts and won't actually fit between a tightened down inner ring and the middle ring to get them in the holes.
The other minor issue I ran into was with the 58mm BCD and the external BB cups. Out of eight 58mm BCD chainrings in my garage, only one would actually work with the Mr. Whirly cranks without modification. The inner chainring is actually positioned such that it rotates around the BB cup. The BB cup must be able to fit through the middle part of the ring. In the picture below, the silver 20T Sugino steel ring just barely fits around the BB cup. I'm guessing all you'd have to do is clear it since the cranks are so stiff, but I haven't actually tried it yet. You can see some of the gold from the 24T aluminum Vuelta that extends inside the Sugino ring. This little extra aluminum causes the issue. I don't know what dremmelling off that part of the ring would do to it structurally, but at some point that's what I will do.
I ended up installing these with a 29T in the middle and a bash ring in the outer with nothing in the inner position. This is what I had been running with my HSCycle 195mm
cranks.
On the trail, it didn't take long to notice a huge improvement in stiffness of these cranks over any other cranks I've ridden. To be fair, the only non-square taper cranks I've ridden were a set of Octalink XT's from about '99-'03. This is the first external BB crank I've ridden. Any leverage I lose in going from 195mm down to 185mm is more than made up for in the stiffness. Chainline and Q are what I would call neutral. I wouldn't mind if both moved outward a bit, but I like a wider Q than most people would and the middle ring was pretty well centered on the rear cassette. This is good since you really can't adjust either with this design.
I could go on and on about how much I like these cranks and really do think they are just about perfect. Perfection, to me, would have been to use 74mm as the base BCD for the arms and then do what you want with the spiders. If you wanted a 58/94 spider, then you just attach the spider to the 74mm holes and have 58 & 94mm holes on the spider. When I saw the price of the 94mm Spider, I thought long and hard about ordering the 27T X 58mm chainring Action-Tec lists on their website and not buying a spider. I don't know if Surly would consider no-spider usage of their crank as officially supported. But, a single 58mm BCD ring could easily be bolted on and the cranks seem very sturdy. Using 74mm holes could give anyone wanting to run a single ring up front many low-priced options for rings without buying a spider. It's one thing to say I would want cranks like that and another for someone to go through a complete design effort to see if it is even feasible to create something that is economical and structurally sound.
I suppose time and miles may dull my enthusiasm for these, but for now I love them. I think the last time I got this excited about a bike component was 10-11 years ago when I got my Chris King hubs.
